Games Workshop quietly changed their bitz ordering program on February 1st. It was quiet enough that I had to read it on a forum, despite being a partner store. No longer will customers be able to order various body parts and obscure modifications for their miniatures. The new 2008 catalog is probably 20% of the size of the 2007 monster tome. Availability of bits will be limited to bitz packs with this new catalog.
Each copy of the Citadel Catalog 2008 also includes a U.S. Price guide for the main range plus bitz packs, Specialist Games and Collectors Miniatures
This is part of their cost cutting program, which included axing Black Industries last week. We had some heads up that this program was on the potential chopping block, but BI was a big surprise. As a new partner store, we were just starting to get into Bitz ordering. It's not a hugely profitable line for even the biggest GW stores, probably an extra 1% of their store sales each year, but it's essentially free money, since everything is special ordered. You can read customer reactions on Tabletop Gaming News.
This isn't very surprising at all after the BI decision. If there's one area that's got a high overhead compared to the amount of profit generated it has to be bitz ordering. There's a good reason why Battlefront made this same move over a couple of years ago.
ReplyDeleteStill, it's another case of hurting themselves in the long term for short term benefits. These decisions to cut profitable enterprises in order to lower overhead look more and more like desperate moves on their part.
It's the 25th anniversary of Warhammer and for the first time since I got into the game, I'm seriously wondering if GW will still be around for the 30th.
I finally got a call explaining it all today. They've got 18,000 bit items and 18,000 bins in their warehouse. The bits apparently sell poorly, compared to other specialist items. They'll be making larger packs from existing bits, so rather than one shoulder pad, now you're getting ten shoulder pads with ten related items that always seem to sell with shoulder pads.
ReplyDeleteI hope that you can get on the horn with your rep and browbeat them into at least filling the back orders on bitz orders that customers already placed.
ReplyDeleteThey sent my three dog heads (one of each variant) with no dog bodies.
I need my dog bodies, otherwise the heads really don't serve much purpose.
I'll need more information quickly, but for now I know nothing about your canines. I can tell you a lot of parts are gone right now, with some customers not getting all of their bitz orders, which before was unheard of.
ReplyDelete